Wednesday, 29 March 2006

Organ Donation is Barbaric

CNN has a heartwarming article about how
recipients of organs from the same donor form a kind of extended
family. Do families realise what organ donation entails? Their
loved is slit open and dissected like a frog; he is eviscerated like a
butchered animal. This is disgusting; it is barbaric. We rightly
condemn the savages of New Zealand for eating their dead, but are we any
different? If some cannibal ate my grandmother, I would not invite him
to my wedding—and yet this family did exactly that! Have we so
far lost our moral compass that this seems normal?

Organ donation should be legal; I have no quibble there, for donation
is a private matter between consenting parties. But it should be
condemned from every pulpit; it should be derided; it should be socially
unacceptable. I very much hope that should I ever be faced with a
failing body that I resist the temptation to receive a transplant from a
corpse. Donation by the living is an entirely different matter, of
course—I’d cheerfully give a kidney if needed.

The Twit of Tuttle, Oklahoma

The city manager of Tuttle, Oklahoma discovered that his web sites were
displaying the vendor default web page, so he did what came naturally to
him: he
accused the vendor of cracking his site. This man is an
insufferable twit—surely he can be removed from office!

Sunday, 26 March 2006

All Grain

This afternoon and evening I brewed my first all-grain batch of beer,
five gallons of a mild ale. The term all-grain means that I
brewed it using raw ingredients rather than malt extracts. To make
beer, one steeps malted barley (and other grains, if desired) in water
of a temperature sufficient for the barley’s enzymes to convert
all the starches to sugar (mashing), then strains out the grains
(lautering) and washes off any residual sugars (sparging), then boils
the wort produced thereby (brewing) along with hops and other adjuncts
as needed for the recipe in question. A quick way to brew is to use
malt extracts, where someone else performs the mash, lauter and sparge
steps for one; that’s the process I’ve used up until this
point. But now I’m a true brewer, and that’s pretty cool.

Siebel Institute Offer a Homebrewing Programme

The Siebel Institute of
Technology, one of the great brewing schools of the world, are
offering an advanced
homebrewing programme this July in Durango, Colorado. I’m
giving some strong thought to attending—it would be an excellent
chance to learn more about my favoured hobby, and maybe even get a head
start on going pro someday.

Thursday, 23 March 2006

Texas Arrests Drunks...in Bars

Yet another reason I don’t live in Texas: the
state is arresting people for being drunk in bars. I don’t
mind public intoxication laws in principle, but the police should not be
looking for people to harass. If someone is causing trouble and
citizens feel the need to call for the police, that’s
fine—but to go undercover and arrest people for drinking is
absurd.

Sunday, 19 March 2006

(10+2)*5

43 Folders has a way
to avoid procrastination: dedicate ten minutes to the job at hand,
working straight through with no breaks; then spend two minutes goofing
off, then repeat four more times to get through the hour. I’ll
have to try it tomorrow at work.

Myths about Islamist Terrorism

Christine Fair & Husain Haqqani dispel some
current myths about Islamist terrorism: Isræl’s not the
big deal; poverty doesn’t lead to terrorism; young men are the
most likely terrorists; and madrasas aren’t terrorist factories.
Thought-provoking reading.

The Little Coder's Predicament

A blogger named why the lucky stiff argues that we
need more little languages for kids to play with. When we were
young, every computer system had an included programing language which
let one play around. I myself was inspired by the Basic available for
our TI-99/4a; it’s no doubt a large part of the reason that
I’m now a Unix syadmin, and that I have such cool things available
as my beer tasting notes.

But most devices these days lack such accessible tools, and hence
kids are much less likely to get drawn into programming. This could
hurt in the years to come. And besides, wasn’t one of the great
ideas of the personal computer revolution that everyone would
be a programmer someday?

How Aeroplanes Really Fly

We all learnt in school that æroplanes fly due to the Bernoulli
effect—but as it turns out, this isn’t actually so. The
late Jef Raskin explains
that flight is due to the Coanda effect, as can be demonstrated with
a spoon and tap water. Very cool example of how common knowledge
isn’t always correct.

Saturday, 18 March 2006

The Real Cost of Ethanol

Writing in Slate, Robert Bruce does
a bang-up job of debunking
ethanol’s utility as a fuel—at least for vehicles (it
remains a fine fuel for men…). He points out that we’re
spending $37.3 billion on ethanol subsidies. He notes that a gallon of
ethanol made from corn yields about 76,000 BTUs, but costs 98,000 to
make. Even soy, the cheapest way to produce ethanol, still costs 27%
more to make than it yields. Bryce also reports that switching to
ethanol involves expensive technical issues (e.g. it absorbs water and
affects the evaporation rate of gasoline).

The Three-Headed Frog

Sushi Eating HOWTO

Eugene Ciurana has written a very cool guide
to eating sushi. I need to run this by the Japanese I know, to make
sure he’s got it correct—but if so, then I’ve some
great new things to try out next time I eat the wonderful delicacy.

DRM Hurts Battery Life

Wednesday, 15 March 2006

Shooting!

Today my kid brother & I went up to the mountains outside of Bailey
to go shooting in the backyard of one of my fellow parishioners. We
shot my Beretta Model 96 (.40 calibre), our brother John’s Chinese
SKS (7.62x39), my buddy’s Ruger .22 automatic, his (Smith &
Wesson?) .45 revolver and his Russian SKS. It was a blast! Afterwards
we’d a late lunch, then sat around talking for several hours, then
had dinner, then sat around talking for a few more hours. The folks
whose land we were using are such nice folks, very friendly &
welcoming.

Tuesday, 14 March 2006

Robert Victor Uhl, USMC

Monday, 13 March 2006

The Saga of the Shoes

Those of y’all who know me, know also that I don’t pay much
heed to what i wear. I’ve a few articles of clothing which date
back to high school, and possibly one or two which date even further
back—clothes just aren’t something which concern me all that
much. To tell the truth, I’d be happy if there were magical
Clothing Fairies who would replenish my closet and dresser every decade
or so.

Well, the stitching on my belt is falling apart, so I decided to get
one of those solid leather ones—nothing to fall apart, and thus
nothing to replace in six or seven years. And today at lunch I was
actually ashamed of my shoes; and if I am ashamed of a pair of
shoes, then they must be truly rotten.

So I went to the nearest mall to rectify the situation, found a belt
and then found some shoes. I asked the shoe guy if I could ring up my
belt too, signed the receipt and then headed back—as I neared the
exit he caught up with me; apparently he’d forgotten to ring up
the belt! Good thing he caught it, as that would have been
awkward to explain to the store detective. Although now I rather wonder
if this could become a wonderful new method of shoplifting…

Anyway, the upshot is that I’ve a new set of leatherware: new
shoes and a new belt. I’m practically a new man, now. Although I
still wish that the Clothing Fairies would visit—I do so hate
shopping for clothes…

Saturday, 11 March 2006

Consensus Web Filters

Kevin Kelly has a great piece on
what he calls consensus web filters—that is, site which
rely on their readers to submit & rank items of import. This is a
category which will become only more important with time; the ability to
filter out items in which one is interested out of the millions
generated daily is highly useful.

The Baker Bun Run

Back when I was at Austin
College, I lived for three years at Baker Hall. One of our dorm
traditions was the annual Baker Bun Run, in which the fellows would run
a lap around the campus dressed in nothing but their boxers (a relic, I
imagine, of the streaking phenomenon of the 70s). I never participated,
considering such things beneath my dignity, but now that I’m older
I really wish that I had. It would have been fun, and harmless.
And—in keeping with my tweed-tie-and-sweater-vest persona—I
could have worn boxers with a tie, and nothing else. It would have been
amusing, and it would have been an amusing memory, but due to my
reticence it’s naught but a regret now.

Even more worrisome are the emergency measures they took trying to
save her life: amputating her arm at the clavicle and removing all
the muscle and tissue around her left breast, torso and thigh. Lord
save me from such physick!

The Geopolitics of Sexual Frustration

Twenty years ago the ultrasound machine started being widely used in
East Asia—and twenty years ago the people thereof started to
murder their girls in the womb. Now, the male-to-female ratio is
grossly out of whack—what will
the result be of having too many young men competing for too few young
women? History suggests that the status of women may rise, but that
it could also be a time of wars, banditry and other adolescent
behaviour. It’s going to be an interesting century.

How Should We Study Religion?

Daniel Dennet (an atheist) and Richard Swinburne (a Christian of one
sort or another) debate
how we should study religion. A very interesting exchange, making
some interesting points about scientific enquiry and the nature of
thought.

My Recent Quietness

My frequent readers (do I actually have any frequent readers?)
may have noticed that this blog has been especially quiet of late, even
more strikingly so when one considers that the month just past was my
most prolific to date. Well, ever since January I have been
busy at work—they’re actually getting their
money’s worth out of me! And thus rather than spend my time
browsing the web and blogging about neat stuff, I find that my time is
spent working rather hard.

But now it’s the weekend, I’ve no films from Netflix, and I’ve time to catch
up. So buckle your seatbelts, folks—we’re in for quite a
ride!

One Thousand Miles

Today my bike’s odometer rolled over to 1,000 miles! That’s
63,360,000 inches, every one of which was powered by my two
legs. That’s also 1,000 miles not on my car—at my rate of
34½¢/mile, that’s a savings of $345. Still not
break-even, but getting there. And of course I’m healthier
too.

One thousand miles! One thousand miles! (I’m doing my
victory dance, which is a sight no-one should be subjected to) One
thousand miles!

Wednesday, 08 March 2006

Hairy Lobster Discovered

Ben Stein's Final Morton's Column

Ben Stein has just written a remarkable
column at E! Online, his final under the Monday Night at
Morton’s tagline. It is a profound reflection on the
nature of celebrity and human worth, and is quite unusual for normal
entertainment fare. You need to read this, now. Some quotes:

Real stars are not riding around in the backs of limousines or in
Porsches or getting trained in yoga or Pilates and eating only raw fruit
while they have Vietnamese girls do their nails. They can be
interesting, nice people, but they are not heroes to me any longer.

A real star is the soldier of the 4th Infantry Division who poked his
head into a hole on a farm near Tikrit, Iraq. He could have been met by
a bomb or a hail of AK-47 bullets. Instead, he faced an abject Saddam
Hussein and the gratitude of all of the decent people of the world./p>

And:

We put couples with incomes of $100 million a year on the covers of
our magazines. The noncoms and officers who barely scrape by on military
pay but stand on guard in Afghanistan and Iraq and on ships and in
submarines and near the Arctic Circle are anonymous as they live and
die.

I am no longer comfortable being a part of the system that has such
poor values, and I do not want to perpetuate those values by pretending
that who is eating at Morton’s is a big subject.

And finally:

We are not responsible for the operation of the universe,
and what happens to us is not terribly important. God is real, not a
fiction, and when we turn over our lives to Him, he takes far better
care of us than we could ever do for ourselves.

In a word, we make ourselves sane when we fire ourselves as the
directors of the movie of our lives and turn the power over to Him. I
came to realize that life lived to help others is the only one that
matters. This is my highest and best use as a human.

I can put it another way. Years ago, I realized I could never be as
great an actor as Olivier or as good a comic as Steve Martin–or
Martin Mull or Fred Willard–or as good an economist as Samuelson
or Friedman or as good a writer as Fitzgerald. Or even remotely close to
any of them.

But I could be a devoted father to my son, husband to my wife and,
above all, a good son to the parents who had done so much for me. This
came to be my main task in life.

Ben Stein is—as though anyone needed to know—the actor
most famous for Bueller…Bueller.

4th Amendment Tape

A fellow has designed Fourth
Amendment Shipping Tape; it has the entire Fourth Amendment printed
on itself, and every time the jackbooted Homeland Security thugs open
your luggage, they have to literally slice the fourth amendment in
half to perform their unconstitutional search (and possible
seizure). Certainly, the animals who perform the work won’t care,
but at least we can feel somewhat better as our personal belongings are
illegally pawed through and stolen.

Are the Marines Censoring the Web?

There’s a rumour going ’round that the
Marines are censoring the web, forbidding certain websites and
access personal email. I hope that this is false, but fear that it may
be true. Perhaps the full story is untold? Still, it sticks in
one’s craw something fierce.

Don't Taser Yourself

The Importance of Friends Who Disagree

Just found a blog entry on the
importance of having friends who disagree. It raises some good
points; in some ways I am most indebted to those of my friends with whom
I disagree most strenuously. OTOH, my best friends are those most alike
whom I think (does that sentence parse properly?). There’s a
place for both, methinks: on the one hand there are those who challenge
one, and on the other there are those who affirm one. Both are
necessary.

The End of Income Tax

gcc 4.1

The GNU Compiler
Collection 4.1 has been released, with some exciting new changes.
Given that gcc is at the heart of almost everything running on my
system, it’s good to see the development is continuing and
improvements are being made.

And to think that once upon a time people charged huge sums for
compilers!

Women in Science

Philip Greenspun has an interesting theory on why there aren’t
more women in science: because
science is a very poor career decision. An interesting point of
view, although I don’t know enough about the matter to comment
intelligently.